Doctor Who/The Ark in Space

The Ark in Space
Season 12, Serial 2
Airdate	January 25, 1975
Production Number	4C
Written by	Robert Holmes
Directed by	Rodney Bennett
← 12x01 Robot	12x03 → The Sontaran Experiment
Doctor Who — Season Twelve

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The Ark in Space is the second serial of the twelfth season of Doctor Who, and the seventy-sixth serial overall.

Part One: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Gladys Spencer, Peter Tuddenham (Voices)

Part Two: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Wendy Williams (Vira), Kenton Moore (Noah), Christopher Masters (Libri)

Part Three: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Wendy Williams (Vira), Kenton Moore (Noah), Richardson Morgan (Rogin), John Gregg (Lycett), Gladys Spencer (High Minister's Voice), Stuart Fell (Wirrn Operator)

Part Four: Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Wendy Williams (Vira), Kenton Moore (Noah), Richardson Morgan (Rogin), Stuart Fell, Nick Hobbs (Wirrn Operators)

Trivia

The Show

• The story was rather prescient in that it resembled the 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien.

Behind the Scenes

• Attempts were made to script a story about a space station for Season 12. Christopher Langely and John Lucarotti both tried and failed at this. Lucarotti came closest, but he was incommunicado with script editor Robert Holmes due to living on an anchored boat in the Mediterranean while a postal strike was afflicting Corsica, so timely consultation with Lucarotti was impossible. Retaining only the central concept, Holmes undertook extensive reworking and is who wound up receiving the writing credit, but Lucarotti was still fully paid for his work. It would have been Lucarotti's fourth script for the show and his first since The First Doctor era.

• Filmed was scene in which Noah begs Vira to kill him so as to end his agony, which Philip Hinchcliffe decided to cut for being was too dark. As aired, the scene in the episode cuts from a shot of the Doctor looking on to a shot of him glowering and looking harrowed from a similar angle in a different room, with the door shut and no indication how they got away from Noah. Actor Kenton Moore was furious about the scene being excised because it was crucial to the whole story. This missing scene is lost.

• Part Four was originally to conclude with Noah drawing the Wirrn off into the depths of space, leaving open their survival for a return in a future story.